Video: Ariel Castro Reveals Suicidal Thoughts, Close Calls Getting Caught
By Chuck Sudo in News on Sep 6, 2013 5:55PM
Ariel Castro (Mugshot via Cuyahoga County Sheriff's Office)
Ariel Castro revealed suicidal thoughts to FBI officials and said he was surprised he was able to get away with the abductions and rapes of Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight for over a decade in videotaped confessions released Friday.
The tapes obtained by NBC News show a man who freely owned to his crimes, rarely showed remorse and expressed surprise he was able to get away with his crimes for over a decade before Amanda Berry’s dramatic May escape from Castro’s Cleveland home.
In the NBC News video (which we’ve embedded below) Castro describes numerous occasions where he felt he was nearly caught, including an instance where a former girlfriend visited his home and found a television playing upstairs in a room where he kept victim Michelle Knight.
“She seen that I had a TV on in the upstairs room,’’ Castro said in the interrogation video. “And she says, ‘What is that? You have a TV on up there?’ And my heart started beating, and I was like, ‘OK, she's probably catching onto something.”
Castro told interrogators he once used Amanda Berry’s cellphone shortly after he abducted her to call her mother and inform her that her daughter was alive, and that he was surprised police didn’t arrest him when he abducted Gina DeJesus because there were surveillance cameras near the school where he kidnapped her.
FBI special agent Vicki Anderson told NBC News the agency had no clues that pointed them in Castro’s direction. “You know, there were no indications that we should go talk to him. We canvassed the neighborhood. We did all of those things. Nothing led us to Ariel Castro.”
Castro also talked about how his 6-year-old daughter with Berry asked him to stop locking the doors in the home, which eventually led to Berry’s escape and fateful 911 call.
“I know I let my guard down,” Castro said in the video.
Castro committed suicide in his prison cell late Tuesday night. Although he was no longer on suicide watch prison guards were supposed to check on him every 30 minutes. Ohio Department of Corrections officials are investigating his death.
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